Historical Background

Cunobelinus

He was the ruler of a large area of southeastern Britain from roughly AD 10 to 42. He is the Cymbeline in William Shakespeare’s play of that name, but the play’s plot bears no relation to the events in Cunobelinus’s career.

Cunobelinus succeeded his father, Tasciovanus, as chief of the Catuvellauni, a tribe centred north of what is now London. During his reign, there was an increase in luxury imports, such as wine, olive oil and jewellery. Historians discovered many coins (pictured) minted during this time. The coins told us about the king’s power, the regions he took control of and his good relations with the Roman Empire. The many surviving coins from the mint are stamped with Latin slogans and figures from mythology. His power and influence were so extensively felt in Britain that the Roman biographer Suetonius referred to him as Britannorum rex (“King of the Britons”) in his life of the emperor Caligula. About AD 40 Cunobelinus banished his son Adminius, who thereupon fled to Rome and persuaded Caligula to make preparations to invade Britain. The expedition was assembled, but it never left the continent. After Cunobelinus’s death, his two other sons, Caratacus and Togodumnus, displayed the hostility toward Rome that gave the emperor Claudius an excuse to impose Roman rule on the island.

Ancient Britain

Archaeologists working in Norfolk in the early 21st century discovered stone tools that suggest the presence of humans in Britain from about 800,000 to 1 million years ago. These startling discoveries underlined the extent to which archaeological research is responsible for any knowledge of Britain before the Roman conquest (begun AD 43). Britain’s ancient history is thus lacking in detail, for archaeology can rarely identify personalities, motives, or exact dates or present more than a general overview. All that is available is a picture of successive cultures and some knowledge of economic development. But even in Roman times Britain lay on the periphery of the civilized world, and Roman historians, for the most part, provide for that period only a framework into which the results of archaeological research can be fitted. Britain truly emerged into the light of history only after the Saxon settlements in the 5th century AD.

Wales

A constituent unit of the United Kingdom that forms a westward extension of the island of Great Britain.

Famed for its strikingly rugged landscape, the small nation of Wales, which comprises six distinctive regions, was one of Celtic Europe’s most prominent political and cultural centers, and it retains aspects of culture that are markedly different from those of its English neighbors.

The Welsh today are descended from many people. Celtic tribes from Europe came to settle the whole of the British isles around 500-100 BC, alongside the original Iron Age population.

It was their language which sowed the seeds of the modern Welsh language. Roman and Saxon invasions pushed the original Britons into the land area of Wales, where they became the Welsh people. Inward and outward migration has added diverse new layers of population across history.

But, apart from a few brief years in the 11th century, Wales was never a single independent political unit. Instead, medieval Wales was a collection of different kingdoms, united by a common language, law and sense of difference to the English, but divided by rival ambitions and territorial claims.

Those divisions made Wales vulnerable and, for the two centuries that followed the Norman conquest of England, Welsh territory was lost both to the English crown and to individual barons.

Roman Britain

55 BC – Julius Caesar leads the first Roman military expedition to Britain, although his visit did not lead to conquest.

54 BC - Julius Caesar’s second expedition; again, the invasion did not lead to conquest.

27 BC- AD 14 - Augustus's reign as the first Roman emperor.

AD 10-42 - Cunobelinus's reign over southeastern Britain.

AD 43-87 - Under Roman Emperor Claudius the Roman conquest of Britain occurs.

Before Roman occupation the island was inhabited by a diverse number of tribes that are generally believed to be of Celtic origin, collectively known as Britons. The Romans knew the island as Britannia.

It enters recorded history in the military reports of Julius Caesar, who crossed to the island from Gaul (France) in both 55 and 54 BC. The Romans invaded the island in 43 AD, on the orders of emperor Claudius, who crossed over to oversee the entry of his general, Aulus Plautius, into Camulodunum (Colchester), the capital of the most warlike tribe, the Catuvellauni. Plautius invaded with four legions and auxiliary troops, an army amounting to some 40,000.

How the History Relates to Our Text

There is minimal relation to the historical events that occurred during Cunobelinus’s reign and the events of Cymbeline. There was Roman influence and invasion before his reign by Julius Caesar and after by Claudius Caesar. Additionally, throughout the piece it is mentioned that Augustus is the Caesar of Rome when Augustus’s reign ended 4 years into Cunobelinus’s reign. There is no reference to Cunobelinus having a daughter, but had three sons who do not share names with the sons in the play. Though, he banished one, and the two others following his death ironically had a hostility towards Rome that could be compared to that of the Queen, in the play, that gave reason to Claudius’s invasion.

In regards to Wales, a criticism this piece receives is a lack of Welsh allusions, besides Milford Haven, to be considered an accurate representation of Welsh society.

The plot line involving Cymbeline, Guiderius, Arviragus and the Romans in Britain is based on a tale in the Raphael Holinshed’s 1577 Chronicles. Holinshed briefly describes the life of 'Kymbelinus', an impressive soldier and a powerful king, whose friendship with the Romans was so great that he paid them tribute willingly when he could have refused to. His elder son Guiderius, however, refused to pay tribute to the Romans. This angered Emperor Claudius, who invaded Britain.

Page updated

Report abuse